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What's the organization all about: "The interfaith organization is open to progressive people who are
religious, spiritual but not religious or secular and understand the
need for a politics of meaning and wish to support efforts to build it."*

Also in the news: While the conventional wisdom is that George W. Bush caved into the Religious Right by pulling his Supreme Court nominee, across the pond in the United Kingdom a leading figure in the Conservative Party (the Tories) told the Religious Right in the UK to go get stuffed.

-----*A walk on a wild aside: I've always liked the optional punctuation rule calling for a comma before the last item in a series. I had to re-read the above-quoted sentence: "spiritual but not religious or secular..." or "spiritual but not religious, or secular...?" The sentence's meaning is clear without the comma, I admit, but a comma before "or secular" would have saved me some time.

Here it is, right from the Rescrew Renew America website itself, the list "of women and men from which many strict constructionists" would love Bu$h to select his Miers-replacement. These are names to hope you don't hear him uttering in a speech anytime soon. (The "not Ivy League"/"Ivy League" distinctions are interesting--the author, Gaylor, didn't attend an Ivy League school, so I presume he doesn't like them.)

Dispensationalism isn't real evident in popular culture...yet. Maybe there was a reference to it in Saved!. But, certainly, no Dispensationalist musical is being planned--at least not that I know of. Yet, Dispensationalism is a theological belief held by tens of millions of Americans, the vast majority of them being conservative evangelicals or fundamentalists, though the concept has been introduced (perhaps not with the formal name Dispensationalism) to non-Christians through the phenomenally popular Left Behind series. Importantly, it is a concept that by way of the pervasive and persuasive sway of the Religious Right over the Republican Party actually has affected foreign policy, political appointments, and the nomination of candidates.

Religious Right Watch has gotten some very positive feedback about its glossary (recently updated), where we attempt definitions of terms like Dispensationalism in light of the Religious Right. One person who understands Dispensationalism well is Chip Berlet. Below is his recent post on Dispensationalism from his site. -sji

A group of ultraconservative political operatives have harnessed a particular reading of Biblical prophecy, known as Premillenial Dispensationalism, (embraced by tens of millions of evangelical Christians) and transformed these beliefs into campaigns to deny basic rights to groups of people framed as sinful and subversive.

Premillennial means a belief that Jesus Christ returns in the End Times and, after a series of confrontations and battles against evil, he reigns over an earthly utopia for a thousand years…a millennium. Therefore, Christ returns before (“pre”) the Godly millennial kingdom. Dispensations are epochs, or blocks of history, during which certain things happen. Premillennial Dispensationalists think that we are poised on the edge of that historic epoch during which the End Times preface the second coming of Christ and his millennial reign.

A large portion of Christian evangelicals who hold these specific theological beliefs also believe that devout and Godly Christians, before the tremendous confrontations or “Tribulations” that culminate in a huge global Battle of Armageddon, will be spared injury or death when they are brought away from Earth and held in God’s protective embrace in an event called the “Rapture.”

It is easy to poke fun at these types of religious beliefs, but it is deeply offensive and provocative in a way that undermines a serious and important public debate over the proper boundaries for religious belief and public policy decisions. It is not accurate to dismiss Christians who hold these beliefs as ignorant, uneducated, or crazy. Social scientists have thoroughly refuted these stereotypes with polling data and in-depth interviews. In addition, it is not fair to ask people of faith simply to abandon their beliefs when they step into the Public Square or political arena.

It is also not fair, however, for those in the Religious Right to use God as a trump card in public policy debates.

Premillennial Dispensationalism and a belief in the Rapture have only recently been steered toward a particular ultraconservative agenda. For many decades the evangelicals who held these beliefs were wary of too much political participation, which they saw as pulling them away from their religious obligations and devotions. Most felt that God’s plan for the End Times would reveal itself without the need for political activism. After all, God in the millennial utopia would ultimately reward devout Christians, and this was especially true if they believed the Rapture would protect them from all harm during the End Times confrontations.

In the 1970s a group of right-wing political operatives, seeking to rollback the economic policies and social safety net woven by the Roosevelt Administration, decided to recruit evangelicals into their political movement to take over the Republican Party. In doing so they pushed political debate in our country away from democracy and toward theocracy.

Evangelicals, however, require a Biblically based reason for their actions. Christian Right leaders, including Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Paul Weyrich, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson, provided the justification by arguing that, according to the Bible, Christians had an obligation to struggle against evil in the political arena, and to purify and restore the sanctity of secular society.

The leaders of the Religious Right mobilized millions by arguing there was no compromise with evil. The political operatives provided long lists of who was evil and how these sinners were subverting God’s plan for America. They presumed to speak for God and country. Moreover, they created a politicized religious movement willing to strip away rights from persons categorized as sinful. This type of demonization and scapegoating is toxic to democracy. It erodes the concept of informed consent and masks prejudice and bigotry with a veneer of religious devotion.

Because the leaders of the Religious Right have mobilized such a large voter base, they regularly have meetings with powerful political leaders, including the President. Today the Religious Right plays a major role in shaping foreign and domestic policies.

We can change this situation. The Religious Right does not speak for all Christians or even all evangelicals. The leaders of the Religious Right sometimes argue for policy positions that make their own followers uncomfortable. In a constitutional democracy, the ideal path for the nation is always open to debate; and the idea of God is too big for small minds to shackle. If we want to defend the Constitution, we must learn the religious beliefs of those evangelicals who dominate the Religious Right, treat them respectfully, and yet engage them in a critical public conversation over the appropriate boundaries for civic political debate set by the founders and framers of our nation.

CNN.com reports "President Bush on Thursday accepted the withdrawal of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers." Nearly three weeks after her nomination announcement, which was met by a hostile right-wing who wanted a clearly anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-First Amendment nominee, Miers has withdrawn her nomination to serve on the US Supreme Court.

We at The League are both pleased and deeply disturbed. Pleased because Miers was not Supreme Court material. The writings which were made public demonstrated that she was not an intellectual but an average lawyer who happened to work her way up the ranks of the Texas legal community and into the arms of George W. Bush. Any nominee from the Bush White House will be conservative; we would much prefer to have a thoughtful, intellectual judicial conservative than a run-of-the-mill, unreflective right-winger.

The withdrawal also reveals and reminds us of an unsettling reality about the Bush administration: outside, conservative groups exercise strong control over it. News of Miers' nomination was immediately met with a barrage of Op-Eds, television commercials, and Talking Heads denouncing the nomination. Skeptics expressed concern that Miers' views on issues important to the religious right (code for abortion, gay marriage, etc.). The withdrawal indicates Bush is all too willing to cave in to the demands of these intra-ideology critics from the outside. At this point, no Senators (who are the ones to actually confirm nominees), have publicly announced opposition. It was outside groups, who were not elected, which killed the nomination. The religious right and other outside conservatives are in the driver's seat.

Frederick Clarkson points out that this week "Dr. Hunter Rawlings, interim president of Cornell University called on the Cornell community to address the 'invasion of science by intelligent design.'"

Fred tells it like it is: "Rawlings, a professor of classics, should be viewed as a hero of
constitutional democracy, and a role model for how university leaders
can and must respond in this era of theocratic creep in American public
life." Fred offers an excerpt of an article on Rawlings' remarks report. (Emphases mine)

Rawlings said, "I.D. [intelligent design] is not valid as science... I.D. is a subjective concept.... a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea. It is neither clearly identified as a proposition of faith nor supported by other rationally based arguments." Advocates of I.D. voice a creationist argument that some features of the natural world are so "irreducibly complex" that they must have required a creator, or an "intelligent designer."

I.D. is, he said, "a matter of great significance to Cornell and to this country as a whole ... a matter ... so urgent that I felt it imperative to take it on for this State of the University Address." The packed auditorium gave Rawlings a lengthy standing ovation at the conclusion of his address.

"I am convinced that the political movement seeking to inject religion into state policy and our schools is serious enough to require our collective time and attention," he said. As such, he asked that Cornell's three task forces -- on the life sciences, on digital information and on sustainability -- consider how to confront such questions as "how to separate information from knowledge and knowledge from ideology; how to understand and address the ethical dilemmas and anxieties that scientific discovery has produced; and how to assess the influence of secular humanism on culture and society."

He said that Cornell, which some refer to as the world's land-grant university, is in a unique position to bring humanists, social scientists and scientists together to "venture outside the campus to help the American public sort through these complex issues. I ask them to help a wide audience understand what kinds of theories, arguments and conclusions deserve a place in the academy -- and why it isn't always a good idea to 'teach the controversies.' When professors tend only to their own disciplinary gardens, public discourse is seriously undernourished," he said.

In his address, Rawlings first reviewed how the I.D. issue is playing out across the country, with disputes about evolution making news in at least 20 states and numerous school districts. He then recounted the controversy historically, with Darwin publishing his groundbreaking book, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," in 1860; the 1925 Scopes trial that deterred anti-evolution legislation pending in 16 states at the time; and the 1987 Supreme Court ruling that ruled as invalid Louisiana's "Creationism Act" that would have forbade teaching evolution in public schools. Now the controversy is back full throttle in a highly polarized nation, Rawlings said, challenging again what is taught in schools and universities.

Rawlings then reviewed how Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's first president, were definitive about the issue when they created the first "American" university. Rawlings quoted White as writing that the institution "should be under the control of no political party and of no single religious sect." Rawlings then quoted from a letter Ezra Cornell had placed in Sage Hall's cornerstone in 1873, and unearthed just a few years ago...."

Conservatives used the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to advance its conservative economic agenda. Among the many ideas proposed (some were adopted), Republicans advocated suspension of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas, imposing a flat tax in the areas, providing exemptions for estate tax, allowing non-itemizers to deduct chartable contributions to disaster relief, and streamlining environmental hurdles to building new oil refineries.

Now the White House plans to exploit the tragedy to advance its Religious Right agenda.

The Boston Globe carried an AP story reporting that the Bush administration has decided to fund religious schools using FEMA aid funds. In essence, the administration plans to divert disaster relief money to religious education programs. The proposal not only forces tax-payers to finance religious activities, it diverts money that could be spent on public education or other services that will be made available to people regardless of their religion.

According to the report, Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said "President Bush believes that hurricanes, floods and earthquakes don't discriminate on the basis of religion and that government's response to them should not either." But the administration proposal would do just that. By spending money on education accessible only by those who are religious (primarily Christian) education, Bush will discriminate against those who do not want to be forced to sit through Christian lectures in order to get to math class.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State's Barry Lynn said that similar actions have not been taken in recent disaster relief initiatives. "If it's a religious building, in general, the courts have not allowed the use of tax dollars to build it or renovate it," Lynn said, "and a natural disaster does not destroy basic constitutional principles."

Hurricane Katrina may have left the Gulf Coast in ruins, but the Bush administration is the force pounding away at the First Amendment.

Dominionism is an influential form of fundamentalist religion that believes that in order to fulfill biblical prophecy, "godly Christians" must take control of the levers of political and judicial power in America in the near future. Popularized by the Left Behind series of books that are said to have sold over sixty million copies, this religious belief system has become increasingly influential. Just how has this religious ideology gained influence in Congress, American political culture, and in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East and on the environment? What can be done to alert concerned citizens to the theocratic impulse growing in their midst? The goal of this seminar is to examine the power and influence of a religious and political movement that questions the separation of church and state, and that aims to establish a biblical society governed by biblical laws.

Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates; co-author, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort; Frederick Clarkson, author, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle between Theocracy and Democracy; Michael Northcott, teaches Christian Ethics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; author, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire; Esther Kaplan, author, With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House.

A DVD of highlights from our previous conference "Examing the Agenda of the Religious Far Right" is available for $19.95. It features Karen Armstrong, Joan Bokaer, Joseph Hough, Robert Edgar, Hugh Urban, Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson.

When it comes to marriage and babies, the red states really are different from the blue states, according to a new Census Bureau analysis of marriage, fertility and socioeconomic characteristics.

People in the Northeast marry later and are more likely to live together without marriage and less likely to become teenage mothers than are people in the South....

On teenage births, the same differences become clear. In New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, about 5 percent of babies are born to teenage mothers, while in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas and Wyoming, 10 percent or more of all births are to teenage mothers.

The study also found that the percentage of births to unmarried mothers was highest in the South.

Unwed women, usually in their teens, giving birth is much more common in the South and Midwest than in the Northeast and West Coast. Other studies have found that divorce rates are higher in the South than other areas, with Maryland having the ninth lowest rate in the nation.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitutioncalls the phenomenon for what it is: deterioration of the institution of marriage in the South and Midwest.

Yet these are the states that claim to most respect marriage! In last year's election, each of the eleven states which passed bans on same-sex marriage are Southern or Midwestern. Yet those states allowing same-sex marriage or civil unions have remarkably low divorce rates as well as less children born to unwed or teenage mothers and are wealthier.

The analysis is clear: if those who claim to care about marriage want to strengthen the institution, they need to stop attacking gays and instead focus on improving socio-economic conditions. The facts reveal the anti-gay marriage campaigners true intentions; they are not concerned with strengthening marriage but rather with codifying a religious definition, regardless of the consequences on civil marriage.

Responding to conservative criticism that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers lacks the qualifications to sit on America's highest court, Senator Mikulski (D-MD) expressed shock "at the sexism and double standard coming out of the far right." Whether or not sexism is a factor in the conservative movement's deep suspicion of the Miers' nomination is speculation. But Mikulski is right to point out that a double standard is coming into play here.

The double standard is the level of scrutiny conservatives are calling for on Miers compared to that they wanted on recent Chief Justice nominee John Roberts, who was confirmed late last month.

During the Roberts nomination, Republicans attacked Democrats for seeking insight into Roberts' judicial, political and personal philosophies. In his opening statement in the committee hearings, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) advised Roberts to avoiding answering any questions that may have shed light onto his positions.

I'm hoping that we won't see a badgering of the nominee about how he'll rule on specific cases and possible issues that will or may come before the Supreme Court....

The fact is that no senator has a right to insist on his or her own issue-by-issue philosophy or seek commitments from nominees on specific litmus-test questions likely to come before that court. To do so is to give in to the liberal interest groups that only want judges who will do their political bidding from the bench regardless of what is required by the law and the Constitution.

The result is, then, loss of independence for the Supreme Court and a lessening of our government's checks and balances.

Grassley was absolutely right. Knowing such information threatens judicial independence. The Republicans and conservative interest groups were making Grassley's argument throughout the Roberts nomination.

But that was when they thought they knew exactly how the nominee would rule on the issues. Now that they are faced with an unknown quantity, conservatives, particularly anti-abortion, anti-gay and anti-First Amendment conservatives from the Christian right, are demanding just what Grassley rejected: "commitments from nominees on specific litmus-test questions like to come before the court."

On the Fox News Sunday cable talkshow, Christian conservative Gary Bauer urged Senators to vote against confirming Miers because, since she has never sat as a judge, she has " no judicial record on things that really matter -- the establishment clause, stare decisis, things like Roe v. Wade."

So let's get this straight: when Democrats try to get Roberts' views, they are threatening a "loss of independence for the Supreme Court" through "a badgering of the nominee," but when conservatives, including some Senators request the same information, they are simply fulfilling their civic duty? I don't think so. Just as Roberts was confirmed without publicly answering all questions, Miers deserves the same treatment, regardless of conservative's lack of confidence in her religious right credentials. To do otherwise would be a double standard.